


Immortals

by b00mgh



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Friends to Lovers, Judge Me, M/M, Shameless Hurt/Comfort, Song fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-16
Updated: 2017-08-16
Packaged: 2018-12-16 01:12:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11818095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/b00mgh/pseuds/b00mgh
Summary: Various violent slices of John and Sherlock's lives told with the lyrics of Fall Out Boy's "Immortals."Pretty much wrote this without direction or foresight, and no betas. I think it turned out well all things considered, but you be the judge.





	Immortals

“They say we are what we are, but we don't have to be.”

“You know, Sherlock,” John’s voice was placid as he barely glanced up from his computer, “you always  _ say _ you’re a sociopath, but I’d bet money you’re a liar.” He had been writing up their latest case-- something semi-insignificant having to do with toddlers faces being graffitied next to adult corpses-- when the thought struck. See, John had nearly rolled off of a sloped roof in chase, and Sherlock had prioritized dragging him up from a drop of over three floors as opposed to finishing the chase and catching the killer. This might have been normal, most people would help their friend if they were dangling by their fingernails over certain death, save three things; John hadn’t even really gotten over the edge, he’d stopped just short of the gutter and was in no way about to fall to his death; the suspect had been mere inches from Sherlock’s grasp; and it would have been better for both if he had persisted for another two seconds. It was unlike Sherlock to miscalculate, and even rarer to see him drop his work for the unnecessary check of the well-being of another person. 

Sherlock was staring at the wall longingly, and aggravatedly. There were post-its and pictures and red strings all over. He didn’t respond, only glowered.

Noticing the silence, John looked up from typing and studied Sherlock for just a moment. “So I’m right, then?” He smirked, then went back to typing. “It’s nice to know you would, in fact, care if I died.” He chuckled to himself briefly. When Sherlock went from the wall to the couch and curled himself up, back to John and the rest of the world, the chuckle grew to a small laugh. When it wasn’t really funny anymore, John told Sherlock in some beautifully freeing whisper that Sherlock could barely hear, but even the whisper was enough “They say we are what we are, but we don’t have to be.” This made Sherlock raise his head, just a little, to look at John. “You don’t have to be that if you don’t want to.”

 

“I've bad behavior, but I do it in the best way.”

Sherlock was watching with awe and fascination, because he was tied to a chair. It had been some strand of extremists from some cause or another-- Sherlock couldn’t be bothered to remember in his current drugged state, maybe they originated in Africa. They had decided Sherlock Holmes was a threat, so they carjacked his cab and drugged him and drove him to a warehouse and tied him to a chair, intending to interrogate him when he was sober. What they hadn’t counted on was John Watson having been left at a crime scene in all the flurry of thoughts Sherlock had been preoccupied with, which led to him  getting back to the flat late, recognizing Sherlock’s absence, tracking his phone, and finding him here with Detective Inspector Lestrade and friends most likely on the way. Of course these were all drug-dulled deductions from his friends shoes. 

So Sherlock could do nothing but watch from a chair as John Watson demonstrated his military training with all the muted grandeur of a covert attack on the extremists in the building. The men weren’t that intelligent, hence John being able to figure them out quickly and Sherlock being able to figure it out under the influence of heavy sedatives, so they tried to rely on brute force to subdue Dr. Watson. 

They failed.

Each one received a broken leg or a non-lethal gunshot wound before landing more than a single blow on the mild-mannered blogger. John was exquisite. Sherlock was especially aware of this, his drugged-up brain producing rosy hues all around, and blood wasn’t really blood, something a bit less sensical, like deep red vines growing out of everything. Still, there weren’t  _ that _ many guards, and so all too soon the show was over and Sherlock was receiving a gentle pat on the face. At some point his hands and feet had become unbound. He went limp in the chair.

“Sherlock? Sherlock what did they give you?”

Sherlock could only utter a scoff, words were too hard right then. He  _ knew _ it was a sedative, but he was no doctor-- that, his brain affirmatively reminded him, was John’s job-- so how was he to know exactly what it was in the first place?

“Sherlock, look at me. Now.” There went John with his big tough soldier voice, it made it impossible not to follow instructions. Sherlock squeezed his eyes open just a little. He thought to himself that John was simply a beautiful human being. He tried to make a reminder to tell him someday, but the effort was all but a waste. “I want you to stay conscious if you can,” John continued, shifting to his doctor voice, “I’m going to try and figure out what they did to you and I need you conscious for it.” He pulled out a flashlight and started shining it right into Sherlock’s eyes, making the taller one squint aggravatedly. “Lestrade will be here with an ambulance soon and then you can doze off all you want.”John assured gently, now with the voice of a friend. 

For a moment Sherlock wondered how someone could be a doctor and a soldier and a friend all at once, the very concept seemed askew. A doctor heals people, a soldier takes them away, a friend just smiled and laughed and called you all sorts of things. Those three things couldn’t all be one person, but somehow there was John Watson, fully and entirely healing those who needed healing, and killing those who needed killing, and all the while reassuring Sherlock with a winning smile. There had to be some connection. What could John do in all three voices? And then Sherlock realized: all three saved people. Doctors saved you from injury, soldiers saved you from enemy, and friends saved you from being lonely. 

This deduction took, of course, all of about three seconds.

“Sherlock open your bloody eyes or I’ll tell Mrs. Hudson about the severed leg you have under your bed.” This snapped blue eyes as open as they felt necessary to keep the secret.

“There we go…” 

Moments later, Sherlock was guided onto a gurney by a few paramedics. Somehow the police cars, for all their blaring lights and sounds, had snuck up on him. Rather than worry, he began to fall asleep-- because John said he could-- and just heard John telling anyone who needed it all about what exactly he’d been through. He really liked falling asleep to the sound of John’s voice and attempted another mental note to do it more often.

 

Waking up in a hospital bed, Sherlock frowned. It was not Baker Street. He couldn’t work from there.

Mycroft was just outside the room, smiling patronizingly at a doctor. John was almost entirely asleep in a chair on his right side, he wasn’t even awake enough to see that Sherlock had opened his eyes.

“John?” 

The man startled awake, and upon realizing his addressor his face lit up wonderfully. This gave Sherlock cause to grin a little as well. 

“How are you feeling?”

“Annoyed. I should be at Baker Street catching criminals, not in this stuffy little room.” When this didn’t seem to be what his friend was looking for, Sherlock added “I’m entirely fine.”

Now flooded with unguarded relief, John joked “Yeah, it seems you are.”

Then there was a memory, a spark of one anyhow, that made Sherlock feel compelled to tell John something he couldn’t quite grasp. His brows knit.

“You okay? Does it hurt?” John asked, mildly as ever, but tinged with worry.

“Fine. I’m fine. But John, about the warehouse--”

Sherlock was saved from having to remember what it was he had to say by John cutting him off with an answer to a question Sherlock had forgotten about. “Oh, don’t worry they’re all in custody. Lestrade said I didn’t end up killing anyone, so no problem there, but he did say that I’ve some bad behavior, breaking their kneecaps and all.” He grinned cheekily, no remorse.

A smirk crept into Sherlock’s features. “Oh, but you do it in the best way.”

  
  


“I'll be the watcher of the eternal flame.”

“Honestly, brother mine, that was the most base of plans and you fell for it.” Mycroft’s disappointment etched itself a deeper hole in Sherlock’s skin. “First you lose the graffiti killer and now you get yourself kidnapped,” A pause of monotone voice was followed by a forced smile, “you are certainly losing your tact.”

Sherlock was lying on the couch, eyes closed, arms crossed over his chest. “‘Tis a dangerous job, Mycroft.” His voice was an imitation of patronizing sarcasm. “You don’t expect me to stop working, do you?”

Holmes the elder frowned deeply, turning to the window of 221B Baker Street so the younger couldn’t see. He knew the alternative to work and weighed his options dubiously, risk of death by overdose or risk of death by something involving being in constant close proximity to murderers. He’d thought this through many times before and always came up with the same answer. “No, I don’t.” He sighed and went to the door, John would be back in one minute and forty-three seconds-- give or take five seconds-- and Mycroft preferred his visit not be that public, lest rumors of familial sentiment spread. “But do be more careful in the future.” He said as he passed under the doorframe.

“I’ll always be in danger of some kind Mycroft, my life is one big gamble just as much as everyone else.” Sherlock called down the hall after his brother. This was an attempt at callous detachment that had somehow been strangled into a gentle call for self-reassurance.

“I’ll be the watcher of that eternal flame.” Mycroft muttered to himself, emotionless voice almost, almost, bitter.

  
  


“I'll be the guard dog of all your fever dreams.”

Nightmares frequented 221B Baker Street as if they, too, were occupants, so the escalation into night terrors wasn’t unheard of, just rare. The contents ranged from Sherlock’s demented fears of Moriarty coming back and John’s terror of the Reichenbach fall to Sherlock’s desperation not to be alone and John’s vaguely PTSD-induced Afghanistan flashbacks, and they were usually the kind of thing one keeps to themselves. 

Sure, Sherlock and John both knew about each other’s nighttime troubles, but they didn’t know that they knew, so they silently pretended they didn’t. Sherlock ignored the slight limp John would have for the early hours of the day and John ignored the dark circles under Sherlock’s eyes. They both ignored the occasional scream, or sounds of sobbing muffled through floorboards. It was always worse for the few days following any big danger-- both of them had been driven nearly to insomnia by Moriarty’s pool party and John couldn’t get more than an hour at a time for months after the fall. 

Both knew the pattern, but always managed to ignore it out of stubbornness when it was them who was to be having the nightmares.. They would reason with themselves “I won’t get them. Not this time. I won’t let myself have those dreams again.” while their counterpart knew to give them their privacy that night. 

So John knew that that night was a dangerous one.

That morning a woman claiming she was committing arson for the good of Britain had set fire to the derelict library that the pair of them happened to be in, looking for her no less. They had been separated at the time, searching opposite wings of the building’s top floor. Before they had time to find any clues at all, smoke was rising up the stairs and the whole bottom floor was filled with fire. Sherlock had made his way precariously outside, assuming John was already out, and had been horrified to discover that he was, in fact, still inside. And if John hadn’t been in a bathroom (wetting his jumper to hold over his face) then he might very well have been caught up in the entire collapse of half of the top floor into the bottom floor. Fortunately, this actually worked to his advantage, as the fallen concrete stifled enough of the flames for John to pick his way down to the first floor and out of a shattered window. Sherlock had been livid, and terrified, and relieved. 

John knew that even though he was entirely fine, Sherlock would have dreams that claimed otherwise, and this time he didn’t intend to sleep idly while he knew the man downstairs was reliving Hell over and over again every time he closed his eyes. Not that he wanted to sleep either… 

He waited in his chair, writing up a case, until Sherlock retired to his bed at around 1:00 a.m. and kept waiting for a while longer. 

At 3:30 a.m. it began, which was an hour earlier than John had predicted. First there was just a small moan, and John closed his laptop, a few seconds silence rested before John hardened himself to any criticisms about going into another man’s room at night while he slept and stood, quietly going to and opening the door to Sherlock’s room. 

The man was a bigger mess than John had ever seen him, discounting where drugs were involved. His blanket was on the ground, kicked off despite an insistent chill shrouding the whole flat, and his sheets were wrinkled under him, ebony curls tangled around his head, eyebrows knitted with what looked to be pain, body pulled in on itself like he was expecting an assault. This pained John to see, and he blamed himself for it just a little bit, despite knowing that exactly none of this had been his design.

The moans grew to tears, which grew to fits of shaking and finally John had had enough. He approached Sherlock with a tentative hand. He shook his friend insistently, and maybe a little harder than intended. “Sherlock? Wake up, mate, it’s a dream. Wake up, Sherlock.” The sleeping form froze, even the breathing stopped for about two and a half seconds before Sherlock opened his eyes with a jerk away from John’s hand and a gasping breath.

It took Sherlock an unprecedentedly slow five seconds to even register his surroundings. Before that he just gasped for breath, nearly hyperventilating, and let a few more tears glide down the ridge of his cheekbones. 

John didn’t like seeing Sherlock this vulnerable, but he had seen it before on one or two occasions. He murmured much quieter than before “Sherlock? Are you okay?” 

The sudden speech made Sherlock jump back again and he looked pitifully into John’s mouse-brown eyes. “John?” He asked, sounding almost unsure, and this brought a new wave of tears, which were unsuccessfully held back, but quickly wiped away with a silky gray pajama sleeve. “Oh. John.” Sherlock sat up. “What is it? Is it morning already? Has Lestrade called?” He wiped his eyes again with his other sleeve. 

“No, Sherlock, it’s 3:45 in the bloody morning. I don’t think Lestrade is even awake.” John said this a little more sarcastically than intended, so he softened it with an awkward smile.

A new level of fear, this one more of a child’s embarrassment, crowded Sherlock’s pale blue eyes. “Did I wake you, then?” Even as drowsy as he was, Sherlock knew this was not why John was sitting on the edge of his bed at 3:47 in the morning, but he wanted out of that situation and couldn’t find it in himself to snap at the doctor right then.

“No, I never went to bed.” 

Then there was silence.

Until 3:54 when Sherlock said “You died in this one. You always die, almost always. Sometimes you’re just gone. Once you killed me. But in this one you died.” A quiver came to his deep voice. “You were in the fire and burning, I was trying to get inside to find you, but I couldn’t move. I saw the building collapse, not just the second floor but the whole thing, and you were dead. Crushed between the concrete. I heard you scream.”

“Jesus…” John remarked almost silently, quiet enough for Sherlock not to hear anyway.

The taller man continued, seeming unable to stop himself as his icy irises reeled. “But then I didn’t wake up. I went back home to Baker Street and Mrs. Hudson was trying to make me  _ tea _ , of all things! But you weren’t here and it felt so  _ real _ . It was so real, John. Then when I woke up… I just, for just a second, I thought…” He took a deep breath to steady himself. 

John wasn’t sure what to do, at all. He was a doctor, not a psychologist! He didn’t have any experience with parents staying up at night to soothe a scared child, and Harry certainly hadn’t done so in her life. He was at a loss for words, so he just wrapped his arms around Sherlock Holme’s thin shoulders and rubbed his back with one hand-- public opinion be damned. That was what the people in the movies do, and it was the best he had. Brief shock registered as a stiff frame, that eventually melted away and Sherlock rested his head on John’s shoulder, putting his arms under John’s, and letting himself be lulled back to drowsiness like a baby. 

At 4:03 a.m. John lay a once-again sleeping Sherlock back into his bed, picked up the blanket off the floor, and spread it out over the consulting detective carefully. Then he went back to the sitting room and chastised himself for doing something that was almost definitely not what flatmates do, he didn’t really care though. He had helped Sherlock and for the wee hours of the morning that was all that mattered. “I’ll keep you safe.” He thought near-deliriously to himself, eyeing the bedroom door. “I’ll guard you from all your fever dreams.” He fell asleep in his chair. 

When John woke up at almost 11:00 a.m., Sherlock’s bed covers had been tucked in around him. 

  
  


“I am the sand in the bottom half of the hourglass.”

The man with the feminine voice cooed from the untraceable speakers “You’re running out of time, Mr. Holmes!” Sherlock felt panic rise within him. He had to solve the puzzle in the next minute, as indicated by the hourglass timer in the corner of the room. He had to solve the puzzle of where he was but there were no clues and time was running out and John didn’t even look scared, he was just glaring death threats at the security camera in the corner. Why wasn’t John scared? Why was John so calm while he felt like he was drowning in the wasted seconds. He was drowning under every new addition to the pile in the lower triangle of the timer. He was the sand in the bottom half of the hourglass, suffocating.

“Sherlock.” John coughed roughly. The room was losing oxygen quickly, he didn’t  _ feel _ like he was suffocating, he  _ was _ suffocating. Sherlock could have kissed John, bringing him back to the moment right when he needed it like that. 

“No, later.” Sherlock thought to himself quickly as he registered less than fifteen seconds on the timer. He had fifteen seconds and he’d better figure it out or him and John would both be dead. 

He needed data. The room was entirely devoid of anything but the hourglass and John’s crumpled form on the floor, clutching at his throat and gasping-- he had to look past John or soon there would be no John to look at. The only other thing was the lack of oxygen. 

What room could actually control the oxygen level within them? Not many.

How many hourglasses had their maker’s brand imprinted on the side? All of them.

“Baskerville.” He choked over nothing. “We’re in a lab in Baskerville.” He saw spots, his legs gave way underneath him. He nearly lost consciousness.

A heavy sigh over the intercom “Correct, Mr. Holmes.” After several seconds of trying desperately to regain his breath, Sherlock heard “You now have 2 points out of 3 games. I’ve lost.” A mechanical click could just barely be heard. “I bet the other Mr. Holmes is already at the front door, so I’ll take my leave.” Sherlock almost heard the grin as his captor said “See you in hell.” There was a deafening noise, most definitely a gunshot. The man had shot himself as opposed to jail time or exile. Almost brilliant. Almost.

Then Sherlock slid over to John’s side “John?” He checked his pulse, faint but there. “John?” Breathing also faint, also there. 

However Sherlock didn’t wake John up right away because he knew that John was alive and that was all he needed for just a minute. 

All the sand in every hourglass of the world couldn’t crush him if he and John were both alive.

  
  


“I try to picture me without you, but I can't.”

“Why did you ask for me not to be dead at my gravestone?” Sherlock asked one day over a lunch, at Speedy’s just downstairs. John had insisted they eat because he was “starving” and Sherlock “needed some sort of body mass to continue living”. Nobody had really wanted to cook themselves because there was an experiment involving tongues hanging from the top of the fridge and they both wordlessly agreed that the food in there was probably bad.

This gave John a cause for a double take, and he met Sherlock’s gaze with a frown of thought. His eyes took their time tracing every line of the face across from him, as if it were a map he needed to memorize or a riddle he had to solve. Then he grew self-conscious and looked down at his near-empty plate before answering, “I just didn’t think you could be dead in the first place. Didn’t really suit you.” He took a bite and smiled. “You can’t make a fuss if you’re dead.” This didn’t amuse Sherlock as much as it did John, the former only let the corners of his mouth turn up because John was smiling. “After a few months I really thought that one day you would just walk through the door and all would be as it was. I tried to picture me without you, but I couldn’t.” 

“You’re a ridiculous man.” Sherlock informed his friend with only about 1/36th of a joke hidden in the black pupils of his eyes.

“I’d have to be, wouldn’t I?”

  
  


“And live with me forever now, you pull the blackout curtains down.”

The hospital room was nearly silent, and all too familiar. Neither John nor Sherlock liked hospitals, with the exception of John’s clinic work, but it seemed to be a place they spent more than their fair share of time in. This time it had been poison for John and some cuts and bruises for Sherlock. John had no idea how really any of it had happened because the last thing he remembered was walking to the grocery store, but he woke up to Lestrade saying he was “lucky to be alive” and that they “really shouldn’t be friends anymore because I’m getting an ulcer from all the stress”. Then John had asked about Sherlock and, as if the man had heard him, he came in the room with a cup of coffee in hand. Finally Lestrade had gotten a call from work and excused himself.

“What happened to you, then?” John asked quietly, his voice was near-dead from the side-effects of the poison.

Sherlock sipped his coffee idly, avoiding a cut on his lip. “You were injected with poison, I suspect you won’t be able to leave until tomorrow night.” His eyebrows furrowed slightly.

“Yes, I know, Greg filled me in, but how’d you get all beat up like that?” 

This caused the silence that all but suffocated them. The words that needed to be said hung more thickly than the pre-rain humidity, and it was stifling. 

“You were seizing. And vomiting. And--... screaming. Your pulse was so slow it was hard to detect.” Sherlock explained quietly. “Do you know what kind of poison does that?” John nodded, there were admittedly several with that kind of effect, but given the nature of his assaulters and apparent injection-administration of the toxin, he could narrow it down to Rhododendron extract. “The doctor said if I’d been a few minutes later you would have died.”

“I guess I owe you then.”

“Hardly. It was just my turn, this time.”

“Still, you look like hell.” 

Sherlock smiled bitterly, but didn’t respond past the least characteristic thing he could have done: a yawn. 

This brought John a level of concern, if Sherlock was tired  _ and _ drinking coffee, this was a dark day indeed. He thought for a long minute, while Sherlock rubbed his eyes, and eventually scooted over in his plastic-mattressed hospital bed. This would be absolutely mortifying if someone saw, but he wasn’t sure how much he cared. The fears instilled by callous laughter and mocking jabs of a man so highly respected were fading fast behind ice-blue irises and dark chocolate curls and knowing smirks. John’s father had been dead for years. “Get in here, you git.” John sighed good-naturedly. 

Sherlock paused and just stared. For at least a minute he just stared at John. About halfway through that time it occurred to John that his friend might not be breathing, the expansion and compression of his chest was so slight. John got embarrassed, his ears turned pink and his mood grew defiant. He had opened himself up and wasn’t going to take Sherlock being a jerk about it. “Sherlock?” He muttered, just above a growl. 

“Hm?”

“Lay down for Christ’s sake. You need sleep.”

Eyelashes fluttered over blue eyes, which grew to have a small light in them, almost like a smile exclusively from the eyes. Sherlock crossed the room and shut the thick curtains over the window, which was allowing bright, reflective pools of sunshine in. John thought, strangely, “if we could live forever now…” as Sherlock pulled the blackout curtains down. He wouldn’t remember this thought in five minutes, but when Sherlock curled up next to him, and put his head on John’s chest to hear his heartbeat, and neither of them wanted to move for hours while they slept, John imprinted that moment into his mind forever. That was the day when he realized he loved Sherlock Holmes.

  
  


“Sometimes the only pay-off for having any faith is when it's tested again and again everyday.”

“Sherlock Holmes is kind of like a god, isn’t he?” The cell phone asked. John sighed deeply, because the whole scenario of people coming after him to get to Sherlock was already very old. Couldn’t someone go after Lestrade or Molly or Mrs. Hudson for once? John immediately regretted even considering this. He was a soldier, it was his job to protect others-- especially his friends-- and if the only way he could do that was by being the bait for Sherlock every other month, then fine by him. Anyway, the cell phone was still talking. “Not in omnipotence,” it clarified, “because while he comes close, it isn’t quite there. See you’re his weakness, kiddo, and that means he’ll never be all-powerful.” John could really care less about how Sherlock was or wasn’t god, he was just trying to figure out whatever he could from the voice on the cell phone. It was an entirely androgynous voice, which wasn’t helpful, but he could tell that the person was in a airport. Loud voices from a crowd were laid in mesh with the take off of planes. “See, you just have to hope and have faith that he’ll save you, without really knowing if he will.” This was an unfair comparison, Sherlock always saved John. “I’m not talking about you specifically, John, I mean the rest of us, the  _ normal _ people.” Cursing under his breath, John prayed, really  _ prayed, _ to anyone who would listen that Sherlock could find him before he had the chance to die or something as drastic as that. 

Cold water reminded John of where he was, and when he was. In that case, the where was the Thames river, just off the delta, and the when was approaching high tide. The aforementioned cold water was washing around John’s shoulders. He had forgotten about it because most of him was entirely numb, but remembered because his bare collarbone was not included with that denomination. He checked his watch, all his movements were sluggish and required  _ so much effort _ , Sherlock was late. 

Even standing was becoming a chore, but with his feet chained to a rock there wasn’t really any way to get to shore, or even float idly on the water. The sun drowned behind the horizon, the water enticed John’s lower lip, cold wind steered him away from oxygen. Hope wavered, faith didn’t. However, John had enough brainpower left to recognize the oncoming of hypothermia, and he wished he could call Sherlock to ask him to  _ hurry the hell up _ . 

“It isn’t nice is it? Being left to wait for  _ Sherlock Holmes _ to come save you?” Some disembodied voice called from somewhere-- oh, yes, the bluetooth in his ear. “Sometimes the only payoff for having any faith,” it told him quietly, “is when it’s tested again and again every day.” John didn’t respond for several reasons, a growing resentment being only one of them. “Oh, you can’t say a word at this point, can you?” A pause. “Yep, at this point the water’s covered enough of your mouth. You can’t even open it, can you?” The slimy, sweet voice laughed hysterically. 

“John!?” Not the voice John expected, but maybe the one John needed, Lestrade called John’s name a second time. Not that John could respond. 

“John, say something. We can’t find you in the dark!” This voice was the one John had wanted. 

The desperate baritone of Sherlock’s voice roused him to action and he lifted his head enough out of the water to drench his hair and shout “Here!” 

The pair of detectives must have been closer than John initially thought because he heard feet pounding and Sherlock remark “Fantastic.” 

The water continued to rise, so John has to tilt his head to breathe. 

There was splashing, cursing, and he heard Lestrade chastise loudly “Get out of there Sherlock, you know you can’t swim.”

“But I’m tall enough to keep my head--”

“Undercurrent, Sherlock, I thought you were a genius. Besides you couldn’t carry him out either way.”

A scoff. More splashing. Lestrade came at some point to be right next to John, who jolted when he saw him. 

“Jesus, John.” Lestrade muttered, then procured a set of bolt cutters from his waistband and dive below the water. Moments later, John was free and began to float downstream. He caught himself and swam to where he could touch the bottom easily, then stumbled the rest of the way out of the water. Lestrade was right behind him. Sherlock was right in front of him, and he wrapped John in a coat--  _ his _ coat– the moment he was close enough to do so. 

“Have a nice swim, John?” His voice was back to its usual, emotionless monotone. 

“Can I go home now?” The shorter man hadn’t realized that his teeth were chattering bad enough to make him unable to pretend he was entirely fine. 

Sherlock’s arms wrapped around his coat, which was wrapped around John, who melted instantly. “No, John. I’ve just called the ambulance. They’ll be here in two and a half minutes. You have to let them look at you before we go home.” All this was said in just about the gentlest tone Sherlock could manage, as if he were talking to a small child.

“Mmf…” 

Greg Lestrade cleared his throat quietly. “So are you two--...?” He didn’t get an answer. The other two either didn’t hear him or ignored him.

  
  


“I'm still comparing your past to my future.”

You know, the scene from the movies where the characters all sit down at a sleepover and talk about their tragic past and share an emotional bonding moment never actually happens. Especially not when you actually have a tragic past-- like, say, an abusive father, alcoholic sister, once-dead friend, and war wound that gives you a psychosomatic limp-- or, maybe, an isolated childhood and history of drug abuse. Regardless of never having told each other, John and Sherlock both knew enough about each other. Sherlock deduced everything about John after less than a month of knowing him, and was always updating the information. And John didn't have to be a consulting detective to pick up on the hints Mycroft dropped once in awhile. 

So when it came to a bomb exploding as the duo tailed a skilled arsonist, Sherlock didn't have to think long about why John suddenly pulled out his gun and began firing random shots into the twilight. A thud and a groan resounded ahead of them, he had hit the bomber-- probably in the leg from the looks of the form lying around fifty feet ahead of them. For the case this was fortunate, for John this was unfortunate. 

John kept firing bullets until his clip was empty and even then his finger kept pulling the trigger. He was looking all around, scanning for enemies, his glance skipping over Sherlock as if he weren’t there. 

“John.” Truthfully Sherlock was surprised this scenario hadn't played out earlier. John showed many telltale signs of PTSD, but this was the first flashback. 

Maybe it happened because John hadn't slept in the past two days. Maybe he hadn't slept because Sherlock kept him up with a case. Maybe Sherlock felt a little guilty. 

“John, look at me?” 

At this John turned, and before he even had time to register Sherlock as a human being he ran at him with a battle screech. Sherlock flinched, and that made him easy for an adrenaline-fueled John Watson to bowl over. He started wailing on Sherlock. And sure Sherlock tried to fight back, but he was outmatched right then. 

After a little over two minutes of his episode, John began to see reality again. His punches slowed and stopped. He looked around and reacquainted himself with reality. He saw Sherlock. 

“Sh-Sherlock?” The stutter was almost inaudible. This didn't discount the fact that John Watson  _ never  _ stuttered. 

Sherlock sighed from where he lay on the ground. “Yes?” 

Then all at once John was standing and trying to help Sherlock up and asking if Sherlock was okay and muttering about how sorry he was and asking where the arsonist was and if the bomb had hurt anyone and if Sherlock was okay and why his gun was empty and if Sherlock was okay. 

“I’m fine, John. I've dealt with much worse. No need to cry.” Sherlock said, pinching the bridge of his nose and assuring that it wasn't broken. 

It took John several moments to recognize that Sherlock was even talking to him. Crying? Of course he was crying. He just had to make an ass of himself in front of Sherlock. He wiped the water welling in his eyes. 

The man down the alley moaned again. Sherlock didn't care because the police would have been called about the bomb and gunshots, and been on the way a few minutes ago. John heard the sound but didn't recognize its source. 

Beginning to feel a little worried for his friend, Sherlock ignored the aching start of bruises and took a step towards John. He was slowly beginning to not care how human he seemed. John was human and also amazing. It stood to reason that Sherlock was capable of the same. “John--...” 

The tiniest bit startled, John took several steps backward. “No, no. Give me a minute. I need to--”

“John I'm not going anywhere.” Sherlock slowly closed the gaping gap of asphalt between them. “If you punching me in the face was enough to make me leave I’d have been gone a long time ago.” He wrapped his arms around the shorter man, feeling so human. So  _ alive _ . “I'm not going anywhere, John.” 

A car topped with flashing lights arrived to the soundtrack of sirens. Lestrade emerged. “Get a room, you two.” He griped. 

Neither of the two men cared. They were still comparing their pasts to their futures. 

  
  


“It might be your wound, but they're my sutures.”

“Sherlock, you prick, just sit down!” John cried in exasperation from the kitchen.

Grimacing with a mixture of pain and impudence, Sherlock limped toward the kitchen. 

The kitchen table was, for once, cleared of all experiments. They had all been moved to the sitting room, where the scientist could reach them easier. The current cook was attempting to make the best of the situation by finally  _ using _ the table for its intended purpose. 

Leaning against the counter, Sherlock muttered “It’s my wound, I know how to take care of it.” He had been stabbed in the leg that weekend. It had absolutely nothing to do with a case, either. He’d just been careless when walking past a food vendor, who had of course been chopping tomatoes, and had run into the petite woman with the not-so-petite knife. She had been so excited to see her favorite online celebrity that she dropped her knife. Sherlock had vowed never to leave the house again without his hat and coat-- no matter how silly they looked it was better than getting stabbed in the leg. 

“It might be your wound,” John sighed, “but they’re  _ my _ sutures.” Sherlock had gone to John’s medical office-- in the midst of another patient’s (prematurely ended) session-- and insisted that he be the one to fix him up. He’d claimed that he wouldn’t let a man other than his boyfriend see his inner thighs. He’d been very touchy about those things since him and John started dating, almost more concerned about it than John. 

Sherlock made the slightest twitch of a frown, but sat at the table indignantly. At first he thought it very convenient that he was incapacitated, as it made John more than happy to do the legwork for cases (which were boring at the moment), but by that point he was just  _ bored _ . 

“How long until I can go out again? This goddamned leg is an impediment to my work.” Said the man at the table.

John smiled mildly, “It’ll only be another week, and then you get crutches. It only grazed your leg, you’re lucky.” Sensing the irritability from his partner, he set down the vegetables he was slicing and leaned over. “Dinner will be ready in a minute, then we’ll find you a case.” He kissed Sherlock quickly and went back to the veggies. 

Sherlock blushed, and was angry because that was unfair. How could John just make him all of a sudden not-bored like that? That was supposed to be either work or drugs. Those were the only two things able to make him not-bored before. Maybe John was a drug. Maybe Sherlock felt himself slip into the overdose of love. Maybe he didn’t care. 

  
  


“We could be immortals, just not for long.”

If there is one thing John did not expect to see in his life it was Sherlock Holmes loaded full of shrapnel in a desert in Afghanistan. To say he panicked at first would be a drastic understatement, but to say it took him less than a second to compose himself and get to work would also be an understatement. John Watson did not– for lack of a better term– fuck around. He was ripping off his husband’s shirt in moments to assess the damage and do what he could. In the middle of the desert, nearly five miles from base, with limited supplies, and his own injuries, what he could do wasn’t very much. 

Of course, none of this would have happened if James Sholto hadn’t asked them to investigate the mysterious deaths of various military personnel. If he hadn’t done that, they wouldn’t have gone to the base, and they wouldn’t have been informed by a suspiciously laconic officer that he had seen a disturbance in the area, where they ended up activating a landmine and getting pumped full of metal. On top of everything, they were still no closer to figuring all of this out, and Sherlock was not waking up.

“Sherlock, love, you in there?” John asked, definitely sounding desperate, but not really noticing.

There was a low, wheezing sigh from the man on the ground. Toeing the line between being relieved there was breath at all and understanding that Sherlock’s ribs may be broken from the impact of a mine, John moved to try and pick what metal he could out from his chest. He had tweezers in the tiny medkit he brought with him, and a medical needle, but only a handful of bandages. It took him four minutes and thirteen seconds to remove the larger, more obvious debris, and another six minutes and forty nine seconds to get the majority of the stragglers. After having to remove most of it, John realized he was lucky because the blast had mostly gotten Sherlock’s side, not the chest that John had been afraid of. After those first eleven minutes, the possibility of infection or the shards trying to enter Sherlock’s body, as well as the risk of further internal damage, was severely minimized, but blood was starting to seep through the cracks. Leaning Sherlock against his shoulder– which hurt like hell, for some reason– John expertly and efficiently wrapped his husband in as much of the bandage as he could muster to mollify the bleeding and protect the damned wounds in his husband’s torso. 

Only then, after the crisis was averted, did John look to everything else. Judging by the way Sherlock’s eyes kept fluttering, the way his forehead scrunched up, the grimace on his lips, he was awake, just unresponsive like the prick he was. John himself had a shoulder that felt dislocated, a gash on his lower leg from being tossed back a few feet and landing on a rock, and a good headstart on a concussion, if the raised and angry slice on his scalp was any indication. He wished that they had more bandages, because band-aids probably weren’t going to cut it for this. He wished he’d been more wary, because he might have seen the mine somehow. He wished Sherlock hadn’t been walking in front of him, because then John might have gotten the shrapnel instead.

He put a slew of band-aids over the cuts on his leg and head, because that might help something, but he knew it was simply a bad plan to try and relocate his own shoulder. He could bear with the pain for the walk back. He’d have to.

He threw one of Sherlock’s arms over his shoulders, wincing, but not stopping, and tried once more to rouse him. “Sherlock, you’re going to have to help me for just a minute,” he took a deep, trembling breath, “I don’t think I can do this alone.” That got Sherlock’s attention enough for him to blink his eyes open, they were bleary with pain, but he was trying.

“John…” he breathed, attempting to put weight on his legs, with enough success to make it worth it.  

John tried to grin, it came out as a grimace, “There we are, how are you feeling?” Under his breath, he exclaimed “Thank christ.”

Trying to scoff, Sherlock muttered “Is that a rhetorical question, John?”

 

They’d gotten maybe three and a half miles, taking up forty-five minutes that felt like days, when John started to feel the concussion affect him. It made his vision blur and his thoughts scramble and his legs shake. There was nothing he could do, however, so he didn’t say a word to Sherlock– who was still focussed on putting one foot in front of the other without falling, while supporting as much of his own weight as he could.

 

They were nearly there, the base was literally in sight, and the relief was enough to give Sherlock a push of adrenaline and enough to topple John. Literally. John just fell over, and that made Sherlock stumble, but it also gave him enough adrenaline to wave his arms and scream and run close enough to the base to get their attention before sliding back to John and try to keep him awake. 

“John? John! I swear I will use your favorite mug as intestine storage if you don’t look me in the eyes right this minute.”

“That threat… feels really… insubstantial… right now…” John murmured between shallow gasps and a twisted attempt at a smile.

“Does that mean you want to risk it?”

John put enough effort in to control his eyes and stop them from lolling back into his head and instead lock into his husband’s.

“Didn’t think so.” Sherlock grumbled.

And then John laughed, which shocked Sherlock, as he said “You know, if we survive this…” he paused for a hollow breath, “we could be immortals…” another echo of oxygen, “with all the times we’ve… almost died…” he laughed again, “we could really be immortal.” With a sobering frown, his eyes closed, “Just… not for too much longer.”

“John, look at me.”

Medics approached from behind, pounding footsteps reverberating into the ground.

“Always knew I’d die in this goddamned country.”

Sherlock didn’t even know how to respond to that.

“Glad I met you though.”

Now Sherlock did know what to say: that he married a stupid man, and that said stupid man should open his stupid beautiful eyes and look at him, really look, and tell him that he was ready to give up an entire rest of their lives together, because otherwise Sherlock would not accept his dying. Except there were fatigue-donning medics already upon them, and they ran John and Sherlock back into base, spouting off all sorts of things that they’d need and that they could see.

 

Sherlock was promptly operated on by the medics who had retrieved them, while John was treated by a secondary team brought in afterwards– both were sedated for the procedures and sent home to London before they could wake up long enough to protest. 

With the helpful intervention of one Mycroft Holmes, both boys were put in the same room; and when they would have fits of consciousness, all they had to do was tilt their head to see the heartbeat of their husband on the monitor beside them. With the combined efforts of the aforementioned older brother and one very contrite James Sholto, the suspiciously laconic officer who had allowed two civilians to go off-base with so little oversight was apprehended for questioning, and thereafter found to be the murderer of four other military persons. He was arrested promptly. 

Sherlock was the first to gain full consciousness, and he hadn’t expected this. He had expected John to be up first, dozing in a chair next to him or getting a cup of awful hospital tea, but instead there was time for the nurses and doctors to fuss over him and check his stupid scabbing and tell him all about John’s stupid (and much worse than previously thought) concussion, and then even enough time for some nicer nurse with a flat smile to bring him a cup of the awful hospital tea to drink “when he felt up to it.”

He didn’t touch the tea for hours, until it was cold and John was blinking his eyes open. 

Sherlock was feeling bitter, and sassy, so instead of saying something like “how are you feeling?” he went for a solid “This tea is terrible.” 

John looked so surprised for a few seconds that he didn’t know how to respond, but eventually a smile split his face and he burst out laughing hard enough for another nurse to come into the room and ask if everything was okay, then sort of panic when he realized John was awake.

 

END


End file.
